20 Second Timeout is the place to find the best analysis and commentary about the NBA.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Erving Auction Nets Record $3.5 Million

SCP Auctions just sold more than 100 items from Julius Erving's personal collection for a record $3.5 million. The most expensive single item was Erving's 1974 ABA championship ring, signifying the first of three titles Erving's teams won during his 16 year professional career; that ring sold for $460,741, reportedly the most money ever paid for a championship ring. SCP President David Kohler noted that championship rings generally sell for less than $25,000 and that he did not expect that Erving's rings would sell for more than $50,000 each (Erving's 1976 ABA championship ring sold for $195,396 and his 1983 NBA championship ring sold for $244,240, making it the second most expensive item in the auction).

The Associated Press reported that the Philadelphia 76ers bought 10 lots containing a total of 18 items and that the team plans to publicly display the Erving memorabilia. New 76ers CEO Adam Aron added that he would like for Erving to rejoin the franchise in some as yet undetermined capacity. Erving played 11 seasons for the 76ers, making the All-Star team every year, earning seven All-NBA First or Second Team selections and playing a major role for the 1983 championship team that set a record by going 12-1 in the playoffs (the 2001 Lakers broke that mark by going 15-1).

You can see a complete list of the items and their final prices here (after arriving at the SCP website, click on the links for the November 2011 auction).

0 Comments:

About Me

"A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them."--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture)

"The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery--in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks."--Edgar Allan Poe

"In chess what counts is what you know, not whom you know. It's the way life is supposed to be, democratic and just."--Grandmaster Larry Evans

"It's not nuclear physics. You always remember that. But if you write about sports long enough, you're constantly coming back to the point that something buoys people; something makes you feel better for having been there. Something of value is at work there...Something is hallowed here. I think that something is excellence."--Tom Callahan